Thanks for this. I love theatre of all kinds. I would much very much love to see this piece, which led me to check out other reviews....and what did I find?? The male critics could not deal with Toni and massacared her in varing degrees, while the woman critc worshiped her. One of these days if I ever get out to NYC I will try to see it for myself and examine the evidence first hand.
Thanks for posting the review, Sam, and I'm writing simply to say that I read the play's title as perhaps having more "nous" than the reviewer indicates. Thus, taking "appropriate" as an adjective, it leads us outward to "fitting", and onward by extension towards "overdue" and "owing", and so invites us to an examination and testing of the adequacy of the failed steps towards recognition, acknowledgement, apology, and penance that fill the play. That is to say, "appropriate" as adjective insists on an examination of whether what we're seeing is in fact appropriate, and it leaves us at doubt and irony. And, if we take "appropriate" as a verb, we are brought face to face with the great failing the reviewer identifies in the characters -- their willingness and inclination to insist on their own victimhood, displacing , whether or not they intend to do so, the suffering that is so present in the photos. Thus, "appropriate" describes the taking of the space where injuries are talked about. So, we have a word doing excellent double-duty, drawing us towards the play in a bear hug.
What a useful thought the review offers pointing out how the family guttings in Tennessee Williams' plays take place against unnamed and unexploredi backgrounds of American violence and control, comprehensively toxic, and requiring either complicity or flight. The review puts all that in play. Really great.
Thanks for this. I love theatre of all kinds. I would much very much love to see this piece, which led me to check out other reviews....and what did I find?? The male critics could not deal with Toni and massacared her in varing degrees, while the woman critc worshiped her. One of these days if I ever get out to NYC I will try to see it for myself and examine the evidence first hand.
Thanks for posting the review, Sam, and I'm writing simply to say that I read the play's title as perhaps having more "nous" than the reviewer indicates. Thus, taking "appropriate" as an adjective, it leads us outward to "fitting", and onward by extension towards "overdue" and "owing", and so invites us to an examination and testing of the adequacy of the failed steps towards recognition, acknowledgement, apology, and penance that fill the play. That is to say, "appropriate" as adjective insists on an examination of whether what we're seeing is in fact appropriate, and it leaves us at doubt and irony. And, if we take "appropriate" as a verb, we are brought face to face with the great failing the reviewer identifies in the characters -- their willingness and inclination to insist on their own victimhood, displacing , whether or not they intend to do so, the suffering that is so present in the photos. Thus, "appropriate" describes the taking of the space where injuries are talked about. So, we have a word doing excellent double-duty, drawing us towards the play in a bear hug.
What a useful thought the review offers pointing out how the family guttings in Tennessee Williams' plays take place against unnamed and unexploredi backgrounds of American violence and control, comprehensively toxic, and requiring either complicity or flight. The review puts all that in play. Really great.